Talk:SorryNotSorry/@comment-3575890-20160517165020
This is what I cannot get over. Swan Queen has never been canon. It has never been promised as canon. It’s never been the story the writers wanted to tell. All you have to do is look at the excessive parallels between Snowing and CS to see that the writers have been modelling the ship after Snowing since the start. You can evidently see that they wanted their heroine’s endgame relationship to be like Snowing. SQ has not and never will mirror Snowing in any shape or form. They parallel EACH OTHER, but their relationship does not parallel the ship by which the writers always intended to model Emma’s true love relationship after. To be more accurate, they are written as foils to each other to bring out the contrasting sides of each of their personalities. There is not an iota of a romantic element in this though. Emma and Regina’s relationship is there for character-building purposes. To be more exact, Emma is supposed to parallel Snow and her relationship with Regina, represent a second chance for Regina to do things differently from how she handled them with Snow. If people were to remove their rose-colored goggles, they would see the clear-as-day parallels between Swan Queen and Snow Queen that have taken root in this complicated relationship since the start. With Robin passing and Emma having some responsibility in that - a stark contrast to Snow inadvertently getting Daniel killed so many years ago - this parallel is especially emphasized. Their relationship is important to the show, but it has never been romantic nor has romance ever been an option; otherwise, they never would have been developed in the consistently toxic manner of which they have been. There is just too much toxicity inherent within this ship to sail in any romantic context. It would be problematic as hell to put these two women, who have punched each other, verbally abused each other, repeatedly threatened each other, and of which one spent years trying to kill the other’s mother together and also is responsible for the fact that the other spent 28 years of her life without a family, which caused her to put up tall walls and live in fear of intimacy and love for a good chunk of her lifetime, in a romance astronomically more so than passing this ship up just because it symbolizes representation. I understand the importance of representation and I wish that the writers incorporated more of it into the meat of their storytelling, but representation is only as good as the way it’s written, presented, and the result it achieves. SQ’s tainted history barely translates into a healthy FRIENDSHIP let alone a sexual one and if they were to write it as such now, it wouldn’t do any favors to the cause except shine a spotlight on abusive dynamics within same-sex relationships - which yes, also happens, but is hardly positive representation. I mean, is it too much to ask for some HEALTHY representation? Like, oh I don’t know, Mulan and Aurora, which the writers had already laid out the groundwork for and COULD have actually extrapolated on? Or if not them in preservation of the unrequited love angle, maybe Emma and Elsa? (granted the chips were already laid out for CS by then), Belle and Red? Ariel and Belle? Red and Emma? There are so many positive f/f dynamics on this show that would have translated into healthier and functional romances comparative to SQ that I would have loved to have seen! I love Emma. I love Regina. I love their complicated dynamic. I do not, however, love them as a ship because I believe they are so much better together figuratively, than literally.